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Ads in a Gutenberg World

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Think about those times when ads were intrusive as you read a story on the web: perhaps a distracting video ad interrupting paragraphs just as you were becoming immersed in the narrative, or a tone-deaf ad showing up alongside coverage of a somber event. If you’re a content creator or publisher, think about the times when the “it’s a surprise!” nature of programmatically inserted ads has been a pain point.

As content management systems (CMS) increasingly move to “block-based” editors that are much more visually representative of the final state on the front end, we have an opportunity to design tools that better recognize and integrate advertisements as part of the editorial process. Rather than treating ads as an afterthought, what if we start treating them as a fully integrated component of the content as it’s constructed?

With our preferred CMS – WordPress – heavily investing in a new block-based editor, code-named Gutenberg, our Revenue Strategists and Platform team saw an opportunity to contribute by experimenting with handling ad placement inside of the editor. At the heart of Gutenberg is a block-based method of creating and managing your content, shifting to a unified site-wide “block” concept that further empowers content creators to make their work look just the way they want. We thought: shouldn’t advertisements be one of those blocks?

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Helen Hou-Sandí

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Congratulations to 10up Lead Engineer Adam Silverstein, recently made a WordPress core committer!

With complete access to the WordPress code repository, core committer status is not given out lightly. Through his work on the Revisions UI for WordPress 3.6, leading the recent WP API Backbone client development and many more core JavaScript features, his countless speaking appearances, and his mentorship during WordCamp contributor days, Adam illustrated his dedication to WordPress and the 10up values of openness and community service.

Helen Hou-Sandí

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I am honored to be stepping in for Matt Mullenweg as the WordPress 4.7 release lead, slated to go from mid-August through early December. Being a release lead for such a big and varied project is no small task, especially since it doesn’t mean I stop being a lead developer, core committer, or 10up’s Director of Platform Experience. I previously led the 4.0 release in 2014 and provided the background music for the video – I might make that a tradition, following an upcoming piano performance for my WordCamp Europe 2016 talk in Vienna (a city associated with composers like Mozart and Schoenberg).

Reiterating our commitment to an open web

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It’s easy to take open-source software for granted, and to forget that the Internet we use every day depends in part on the freely donated work of thousands of programmers. If open-source software is at the heart of the Internet, then we might need to examine it from time to time to make sure it’s not bleeding.

The Internet’s Telltale Heartbleed (The New Yorker)

I’m proud to be a part of 10up because we are eager to support a platform we use heavily and that powers a significant percentage of the web. I am sponsored full-time as one of the six lead developers of WordPress, and am very excited to announce further expansion of our support for WordPress. As a fellow committer for WordPress, Drew Jaynes will now also be enabled to work full-time on WordPress. Drew has been instrumental in creating awareness, standards, and output in our developer documentation, as well as contributing in many other areas in the core software and in community projects such as the WordPress.org site itself.

As a part of this expansion, we’ve created a Platform Engineer position and transitioned Drew to his new title. While we’re not currently hiring for the position, we’ve intentionally left the title open-ended as we continue to grow our support for and even build web platforms. We’ve dedicated significant resources to WordPress as well as projects like sanitize.css and VVV, and envision a future in which we continue to do the same elsewhere.

10up also has the rare opportunity to take advantage of a confluence of timing, a core WordPress initiative, and an employee who already runs the effort. We are doing this by donating 100 hours of Scott Kingsley Clark’s company time to the ongoing Fields API project, starting today. Scott has already assembled a strong group of contributors and laid a solid foundation and roadmap, and we feel strongly that supporting this initiative will help move it into a viable state for potential inclusion in a near-future release of WordPress. As a company with a central mission of creating great publishing experiences, the user and developer experiences a fields API can improve are something we are particularly well-versed in.

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10up at WordCamp Philly

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Once again, 10up is back for WordCamp Philly! This year, co-organizer and 10upper extraordinaire Doug Stewart will be joined by John Eckman, Allen Moore, and myself as speakers.

On Saturday morning, I’ll be presenting “User-First Approaches to APIs“, which will touch on what we mean by users, what it means to be a maintainer, and the excitement of a potential fields API in WordPress.

Right after that, Allen will be presenting “A Need For Speed: Performance Driven Front End Development,” focused on how front end performance affects User Engagement and Experience; best practices for performance driven front end development; and tools to measure front end performance.

Then  John will take us into lunch with “Getting outside the WordPress bubble“, a topic perfect for somebody with deep experiences with other CMS’s and their communities (including commits to Drupal 8!), as well as other communities at large.

WordCamp Philly holds a special place in 10up history, as the place where I first met Jake in 2011 and began my time as an agency-backed core contributor to WordPress. Doug even found this photo from that 2011 contributor day in the archives! We’re really excited about all of the great talks scheduled for Saturday, and what’s sure to be another fantastic contributor day on Sunday.

WordCamp Philly 2011

10up at WordCamp London

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WordCamp London 2015

WordCamp London is happening this weekend, March 20-22, and our CEO John Eckman and I will be flying over the Atlantic to join in on what is sure to be a fantastic event. I’ll be speaking on Saturday on what it means to apply a user-first approach to metadata and fields, a topic that is near and dear to anyone who’s extended the WordPress admin, as well as on a core developer Q&A panel on Sunday.

The entire schedule looks great, in addition to Friday’s Contributor Day. We’re especially looking forward to seeing:

Between all of the great talks, networking, and delicious food (who says the British don’t have good food?), this will definitely be a memorable WordCamp. If you’re on Twitter, follow along with WordCamp London on Twitter and via the #wcldn hashtag.

Drew Jaynes selected as WordPress 4.2 release lead

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Drew Jaynes at Write the Docs10up Web Engineer Drew Jaynes will be leading the WordPress 4.2 development cycle, slated for release in April 2015. WordPress’s releases come a few times a year and involve hundreds of people and thousands of lines of code. A release lead coordinates all of these contributors and contributions, while also managing schedules, priorities, and announcements. As a committer for the past year (with direct access to change the source code) and a driving force behind WordPress documentation, Drew has proven that he’s well-suited to the task, and we’re looking forward to this next release.

As a part of our commitment to the WordPress and open source community, roughly half of Drew’s time is donated to working on core and community initiatives. Building on my own experience as the WordPress 4.0 release lead and fellow committer, I’ll also be close at hand as a ready and willing mentor. We were really excited to be the first agency to sponsor a release lead, and we’re even more excited to do it again so soon. Please join us in congratulating Drew!

10up goes to WordCamp Europe

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This weekend marks the second annual WordCamp Europe, being held in Sofia, Bulgaria. I am very excited to be presenting on enhancing WordPress development by getting curious about core; inspired by the 10up experience of building with WordPress and building WordPress itself. I’m also excited to meet a large group of end users, developers, and contributors who many of us based in the United States have few opportunities to see in person, and look forward to collaborating with them at Monday’s Contributor Day.

From West of the Hudson to East of the East River

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They say good things happen in threes, and the next week of meetups in NYC are no exception.

At the WordPress NYC Meetup next Tuesday, August 19, I’ll be showing off a preview of the upcoming WordPress 4.0 and talking a bit about what it’s been like to lead the release.

On Thursday the 21st, I will be presenting “Code is Poetry: A Musician’s Tale” at the JerseyScript takeover of Brooklyn JS, which 10up is excited to sponsor. I’ll be giving a longer version of the talk at WordCamp San Francisco in October, so no spoilers here! Be on the lookout: our Director of Engineering, Taylor Lovett, will be in attendance as well.

Finally, Brooklyn JS will turn the tides and take over the JerseyScript meetup on Tuesday, August 26, also sponsored by 10up. I’m especially excited to be coming on board as a co-organizer for JerseyScript proper. We’ll be releasing another block of tickets soon, so get on the waitlist now if you’d like to join us and check out Jersey City, just a quick subway ride over from Manhattan.

If I won’t see you here on one of the sides of the rivers, there’s always WordCamp Boston the weekend in between. If you will be at any of these places, come say hi!

10up at WordCamp NYC

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WordCamp NYC 2014 is this weekend and we’re excited to take part as speakers, attendees, and sponsor. WordCamp NYC is always a great time, and this one is no different, with four full tracks across two days at the Marriott at Brooklyn Bridge.

On Saturday, Adam Silverstein will be presenting Put a little Backbone in your WordPress! and our President, Jake Goldman, will share Best Practices for Plugin Development. Then on Sunday, catch Drew Jaynes’s insight into the core docs initiative and the major part he played as the docs committer for WordPress. Director of Platform Experience Helen Hou-Sandí and CEO John Eckman will be presenting simultaneously with a deep dive into WP_Query and ‘These fragments I have shored against my ruins’: Modernism, Post-Modernism, and Responsive Web Design, respectively. Doug Stewart and Amy Hendrix will also be in attendance, and you’ll also find many of us at Friday’s Contributor Day at NYU.

We’re also Park Avenue sponsors under the PushUp Notifications brand, so stop by the 10up/PushUp sponsor table and say hello. We’ll be happy to chat with you, especially about push notifications and 10up, and get you signed up for PushUp with the help of our team for just 99 cents.